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Category: David Stockman

Let me start by saying that I like both Paul Ryan and President Obama. I’m sure that both men are sincere in their beliefs that their budget plans are good for America. I believe that Paul Ryan is being misled by the old thinking that raising the upper classes automatically raises the bottom classes. Thirty years after Reagan’s trickle down theory began, we know this isn’t true. And, yes, I can state many numbers and statistics to prove it. President Obama doesn’t want to hurt the lower classes. He knows that they have been hit the most by this recession. He knows that the slow recovery is not helping. He wants to put more money in their pocket.

Both men are wrong.

You cannot pay off debt by lowering your income. It just doesn’t work. You can cut costs, but if you don’t have the money to pay the bills, you’re just going to get into a deeper hole.

Ryan’s budget plan of substidizing insurance to cover medicare may save the government money, but it is only going to hurt the people who can ill afford that hurt.

Obama’s budget plan that makes cuts across the board is more reasonable.

But, if both plans insist on tax cuts, neither plan will work.

Even David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director, has agreed. President Obama invoked Stockman’s name in his speech. Stockman spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon (hear complete interview here) and stated the following: “The problem with the Ryan plan is it is trying to balance the budget on the back of the poor and you can’t do that. The President’s talking about reducing the deficit entirely on the top 2% of the population and that won’t work neither. And, neither side is being honest with the middle class and that is that we’re going to have to have tax increases to pay for this huge amount of government we seem to want…”

You should really listen to the whole interview. David Stockman is the man who said tax cuts without spending cuts would result in the debt we now have. But, thirty years ago, nobody was listening.